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RIO RANCHO — From 2013-24, Jason C. Harper held the District 57 seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives. After more than a decade, Harper announced in March 2024 that he would not seek re-election. As the first session without his presence in more than a decade hits the midway point, here is what Harper had to say to everyone in District 57 and the people of Rio Rancho:
QUESTION: What do you have to tell the people who you represented throughout all the years?
ANSWER: I’m so honored and grateful for the opportunity to represent them and their interests in Santa Fe. I never forgot for one moment who I really worked for, that I was really working for them. For their families, their kids, and my family, my kids, to try to give them the best chance for a wonderful life from the American dream. So I just really want to say thank you for all this support and patience with me. you know, I can't bring my phone with me to work. So you know, thanks for waiting for the evening for me to call you back, you know, just those kinds of things. It was just one of the greatest honors in my life.
Q: What is your hope for Rio Rancho and New Mexico?
A: I love Rio Rancho and New Mexico. I grew up here, and I ended up marrying my high school sweetheart. We started dating in the marching band. I played the saxophone and she played the flute, and we went off to school. But, we both decided we wanted to come back here and raise our family here, and it's just such a beautiful place. There's really a lot of love for New Mexico. I do get a little disappointed, over these 12 years that I've been the Legislature, I've kind of seen why New Mexico is where it is, and really just a lot of it is partisan politics. It's my team versus your team. Instead, let's just come together and do what's right for New Mexico. That was the advice I gave to Catherine Cullen. The most important thing is to realize that the people who think differently to you are not evil, they just think differently than you, so just get to know them, and become their friends, and then try to find the common ground. Facebook and all these algorithms show us that we're different, but in reality, we're probably 80% the same. And so just by working together, we can make a lot more progress.
Q: When did you decide that you would not seek re-election?
A: Part of it is, I feel like, when this country was founded, it was never intended that we would have people who were lifelong career politicians. We wanted people to be in there long enough to learn what the system was and how to be able to change it to make it better. But you know, at the end of the day, you needed to go home to your farm, right? And so I'm not sure I'm a big believer in term limits, per se, but for me, I thought, “In 12 years, I've done a good job, the best I could, and I need to allow someone else to have that opportunity.” I accomplished many of the things that I wanted to, still some things were left undone, and I’m a little bit sad about it. My family's really sacrificed a lot, and my career too. It's definitely impacted my career growth. I feel like I've done a good job serving my state, my country and my community, and I'm ready to focus more on work and my family.
Q: What will you do next?
A: I'm excited. I've got my two youngest kids going to The ASK Academy. We love Rio Rancho Public Schools, we love The ASK Academy, and I was asked to be on their governing board, essentially their school board. So I'll be doing a four-year term, maybe more, and helping out the ASK Academy. And I'm still very interested in tax policy, trying to make sure that we've got a policy that's fair to families, that folks aren't paying more than their fair share. I’m very much an “equal opportunity tax credit hater.” I don't think we should be doing any corporate welfare at all, but our tax code is full of corporate welfare, and so it's making it so that it's a level playing field for everybody, that we're not taking winners and losers. So I'm still to be involved in tax policy, whether that's working with one of the chambers of commerce people or in an advisory role. Tax is my love language.
Q: What got you into politics?
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A: It really was not on purpose. I never dreamed that I could be going into politics. Growing up, almost every night I go up and have cookies and milk with my dad. And we would talk about three things: talk about politics, religion and taxes. I paid attention to it, I knew it was important and that it impacted our lives, but I really have never had the intention of joining, but there’s a “Sandian” that I worked with at Sandia National Labs, Conrad James, and he's just an amazing gentleman and he was in the Legislature, and I was working with him on a project. He was like, “Hey, you know, Jason, we just redistricted, and there's a new district in where you live, so it's a completely open seat if you might think about running for it.” I was like, “That's really nice, Conrad. But I'm happy to throw my support behind whoever decides to run.” So I just waited and waited for someone to decide to run and waited, and no one was throwing their hat in the ring. And finally it got close to the deadline, I was like, “I guess it's me.” So that's kind of how it happened. Obviously, a lot has happened over the last 12 years.
Q: What are some of your proudest moments during your tenure?
A: I feel like I've been very effective being in the minority for the 10 of the 12 years I've been in there, just partnering, reaching across the aisle, and working together. I knew that if I ever wanted to get things done, I had to have Democrats vote for it. There weren't enough Republicans to pass by themselves, so a lot of great things we did partnering with each other. One of the ones I am most proud of is the lottery scholarship about 10 years ago. It was in really bad shape. It was about to really just kind of collapse, and so the Legislature was looking at all kinds of different ways to fix it. Do we make it so only a certain percentage pays for tuition? Do we make it so you only pay for the first two years of college? Or do we make it needs based, or do we make it GPA based? And there's all kinds of ideas out there, and really we just did that “do-or-die” thing. Many people in Rio Rancho need the lottery scholarship. They are middle class, so they're not poor enough to qualify for a bunch of aid but they're not rich enough that college is really something they can just pay for. So, the lottery scholarship has made a big difference, and my wife was one of the first New Mexicans to get the lottery scholarship and it helped her get through college. So I was able to really work with both parties and put a solution in place, and together, save a lottery scholarship. Can we do it so all New Mexicans qualify for it, not just certain ones, and it would go all through college except for the very first semester? That was one that I was super proud of.
Q: What was your typical schedule?
A: I'm super fortunate that Sandia Labs has been very supportive of me working in the Legislature, and when I first ran, I was told, “Well, you know, the sessions only 30 days or 60 days, and then the rest of the year, you can kind of decide your schedule. There's other meetings, but you decide one or two a month or a week, whatever, it’s up to you.” I thought, “OK, I can run and I've got four kids … we're the last nonsalaried legislature in the United States. But what I didn't know was outside of the session how much time it is, just constituent work, helping the folks who reach out to me with issues, going to meetings, then campaigning; there's just a lot of extra work. When we're not in session, you know, I'll go to work in the morning. I'm there from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Then I get home and I'll check all my emails and my voicemails, and I'll make calls, and I usually have a couple political events a week in the evenings. During the campaign it's knocking doors Saturday, and a couple days a night during the work week. So it's a lot of work, it's almost not quite a second full-time job. It could be.
Q: What were some of your favorite community events?
A: I love working with the Boy Scouts. I've been a Scoutmaster a couple times, but you know, the Eagle Scout projects are just awesome because you go into the community and do a big service project. We've done stuff for the Coronado Monument, helping to clear the non-native plants and working the trails, doing stuff like that. Throwing the Grizzly Run at Vista Grande Elementary School. One of my scouts coordinated that, and the fair for vendors on the side, then brought all the first responders and Rio Rancho Police (RRPD) and Fire (RRFD), also got rock walls from the National Guard; just still created a really fun event. Also just going to the Mariposa community meetings and hearing them tell me what issues they are facing and how I can help. Most of the bills that I carried were ideas brought to us by the community, and that was really my favorite part of the job was helping my neighbors and family and friends in Rio Rancho.
Q: Do you have any hobbies that you are excited for?
A: I think I've got two main hobbies. I love home theater and music. So I was in the Cibola High School marching band. It was actually a really hard choice for me. Am I going to be a chemical engineer or a high school band director? In the end, I decided to do chemical engineering, but I just love music. But hobby, I haven't had a lot of time for it, but I really love stained glass. I just love making stained glass windows. I design them, do soldering and all that. I like to think of it as a masculine hobby because I end up putting my own blood into each of my pieces on accident. My front door is framed by three windows, and I designed this New Mexico landscape. It starts with a road runner and blizzards, you see some quail, and drabbing back is a rattlesnake, and it goes up to a cactus and then it goes to the Sandia Mountains and above the doors, the Balloon Fiesta for hot-air balloons. But I've only made one of the windows, so I'm excited that hopefully I'll have time now to work on the other two.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to mention?
A: There were a couple of other bills that I was really proud of. One was, I called it “Teachers Are Human Too” Bill (2017). This was back before COVID, and one of the measures the governor was using to try to keep teachers in the classroom was essentially any sick leave they took counted against them in their evaluation. and so there were teachers coming to school, you know, throwing up in the trash can while they're teaching because they didn't want to lose any points over evaluations because that impacted their pay. So, I carried a bill and worked with several other legislators and carried the bill called the “Teachers Are Human Too,” which said that the sick leave you’ve been given, you can take that without it counting against you in your evaluation. We failed the first time we ran it, but the next time, we were able to get it through, and I was really proud of that one. Here’s a tax one. There was kind of a “gotcha audit.” Like the "gotcha" kind of audit that the tax department would do, and I don't think they were being malicious, but if you're a small business or a business and someone comes to you and says, “I’d like to buy your product,” and now, you need to charge the grocery tax on sales tax on it. Next, they hand you a piece of paper that says, “I'm tax exempt,” so you don't need to charge for this grocery tax. So, you go, “OK, I'm not going to charge you.” Well, the tax department would come and audit you, and if you were missing a piece of paper for that transaction …you have to pay that tax; it was hitting their books. There were a couple of businesses in Rio Rancho, this audit almost took them down; it almost took them out of business. So, I guess the bottom line is we fixed a really unfriendly, unfair part of our tax code and protected your businesses from “gotcha audits.”
